Christine Lavin and Don White, two very, very funny singers and songwriters bring music and sidesplitting laughter to the Mainstay in Rock Hall, MD on Thursday July 10 at 7:30 pm. Admission is $20.
Seeing Christine Lavin or Don White solo is a treat. Seeing Christine Lavin and Don White together is an amazing unforgettable experience. Both are wonderful songwriters whose sideways looks at the world around them will have you smiling in recognition and then almost falling off your chair with laughter. Between the two of them, they have more than 40 years of combined experience making music and laughter.
The Lavin/White co-bills have packed audiences in wherever they’ve played, from the Regent Theatre in Boston to The Ark in Ann Arbor Michigan. Each performer will do a solo set, then White and Lavin take the stage together in a rollicking, laugh-out-loud free for all displaying the kind of chemistry you get from old friends and seasoned performers who share a wild sense of humor and an impeccable sense of timing.
The Boston Globe columnist, Scott Alarik once described them as “the two funniest performers on the folk circuit.” He went on to say, “I have laughed as hard at Don and Christine as I have at any comedians I have seen on stage, but I have never heard either of them tell a mean, scornful, or bitter joke. Always, their humor is fueled by the same empathy, kindness and universality that fuels their songwriting… when Christine Lavin and Don White make us laugh, there is always a warm shimmer of community beneath the silliness. Of all the gifts great entertainers can bring to the stage, I think this is perhaps the rarest and most valuable. Many can dazzle us; but only the very, very best can befriend us.”
Christine Lavin is from New York and started her songwriting career as part of the Greenwich Village scene that included Jack Hardy, Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and Dave Van Ronk. She was later a founding member of The Four Bitchin’ Babes. She has made more than 20 recordings with titles like “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind,” “Please Don’t Make Me Too Happy” and “I Don’t Make This Stuff Up, I Just Make It Rhyme” and is the author of the book “Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-Wha??”
Don White grew up outside of Boston where he first became a songwriter, then spent a lot of time in comedy clubs and then combined the two, returning to the folk and festival circuit where he could be serious as well as funny. Much of his material comes from his own life as a blue collar family man. He describes himself as “storyteller-comedian-author-troubadour-folk singer-songwriter.” He has 10 recordings including a digital-only live recording with Christine, Live At the Ark: The Father’s Day Concert, available on CDFreedom.com. He is the author of “Memoirs of a C Student.”
“It doesn’t sound like a folk concert, it sounds like a comedy concert,” says White of his laughter inducing co-bills with Lavin. “We rehearse and we rehearse and then inevitably, she’ll throw something at me that I have no idea about, with a mischievous grin that lets me know she’s been thinking about it all afternoon. Just to see what will happen. And she’s taught me to do the same.”
“It’s hard to describe what it is that Don does onstage, because there simply isn’t anyone out there like him,” says Lavin. “I’m a brave performer to share the bill with someone who knocks audiences out the way like he does. But I’ve discovered if audiences know me and don’t know him — they become instant fans of his. If they know him and don’t know me, the same thing seems to happen for me. Everybody wins.”
The Mainstay (Home of Musical Magic) is the friendly informal storefront performing arts center on Rock Hall’s old time Main Street. For information and reservations call the Mainstay at 410-639-9133. More information is also available at the Mainstay’s website https://www.mainstayrockhall.org.
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